Justin Dyer, Chief Investment Officer at AWM Capital, shares insights into AWM's venture strategies and human-centered approach to athlete wealth management. He talks about the critical role of networks in VC and gives useful tips for choosing the right limited partner.
Justin Dyer, Chief Investment Officer at AWM Capital, shares insights into AWM's venture strategies and human-centered approach to athlete wealth management. He talks about the critical role of networks in VC and gives useful tips for choosing the right limited partner.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
[6:13] AWM Capital's human-centered approach to athlete wealth management
[9:14] Venture capital's role in family office asset allocation
[16:15] The pivotal role of networks in venture capital
[19:36] Assessing venture funds, navigating both the easy and challenging aspects
[28:13] Tips on selecting the best Limited Partner for your company
The non-profit organization that Justin is passionate about: RAISE Global
About Justin Dyer
Justin Dyer is the Chief Investment Officer, Director of Wealth Strategy, and Partner at AWM Capital. He leads AWM’s investment committee, research teams and investment operations. He has served on LP Advisory Committees and has been on the selection committee for the RAISE Global Conference, which is the premier community for forward-thinking venture capital investors and emerging fund managers.
About AWM Capital
AWM Capital is a multi-family office serving professional athletes, entrepreneurs, and business professionals, with a deeply-rooted belief that wealth goes beyond the financial.
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I'm not afraid to pick up the phone and call various individuals to just say, “Hey, what are you seeing? We feel like there's this weakness in our portfolio. You know, do you have any interesting names that you've either committed to or looked at?” And so that's another great source. I think those types of sources where there's almost a pre-qualification from somebody I really trust, either an individual or an institution helps me quite a bit.
Gopi Rangan: You are listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur - a podcast for founders with ambitious ideas, venture capital investors, and other early believers tell you relatable, insightful, and authentic stories to help you realize your vision. Welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur. My guest today is Justin Dyer. He's the chief investment officer at AWM Capital.
He's based in Los Angeles. We're going to talk to him about his investments, how he manages his portfolio. He's a limited partner in many exciting venture capital funds. We're going to talk to him about how he chooses these funds. What goes on in that first meeting, second meeting as he builds relationships with new GPs, general partners.
Why does he say no? What gets him excited when he decides to invest? What are some challenges in the current market today? We're going to talk to him about all of these topics. Justin, welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur.
Justin Dyer: Thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to the conversation today.
Gopi Rangan: Let's start with you. Where did you grow up and how did you arrive in Los Angeles?
Justin Dyer: I've been in California, born and raised my entire life. So, originally born in the Bay Area. Parents were from the Midwest and East Coast, respectively. And they were good old hippies that came out in the 60s. Met there together and started a family in the Bay area. My sister and I were both born there over in the East Bay, um, Oakland roots, I guess you could say we moved down to Southern California when my father, who was a musician in the Bay area, realized he needed to get a real job, I suppose, to support a family. He started working in the entertainment industry and really grew up here, grew up in Southern California, Los Angeles area, specifically the good old San Fernando Valley.
For those of you who are familiar with that area, nothing to necessarily write home about, but it was a great childhood, great upbringing, ended up going to college back. in Northern California and spent a good chunk of my early adult life, early professional life there. Um, got married actually to my high school sweetheart in Northern California.
She had also grown up here in Southern California. That's how we met, obviously. But, uh, spent a number of really, really, really good years in the Bay Area. And like I said, in my early adulthood and early professional career now back here in Los Angeles, like you said, for the last six, seven years.
Gopi Rangan: You went to college at UC Santa Cruz and eventually you moved to Southern California. I have a tough question to start with. As a child of hippies, do you feel any, do you hear any objections from your parents now that you're in the deep end of capitalism?
Justin Dyer: That's a great question. I guess that they're fairly happy and proud of what I've done so far. Like I said, my dad, I think probably more so has come around to, uh, the, the benefits of capitalism and earning a good living to support a family. And my mom certainly has as well, but I get more debates. If you want to call them that friendly debates with my mom around capitalism, investing specifically pros and cons of that.
Gopi Rangan: That must be a really fun dinner table. Indeed. Now, let's talk about your career before we go into other details about investments. You've spent pretty much all your career in wealth management, asset management. Why is that world exciting to you?
Justin Dyer: Yeah, great question. So yes, I have been on that side of the financial services industry my entire career.
The financial services industry can be such a black box, but early in my career, my college days, really, I had a great mentor who was more in the direct asset management field as opposed to asset allocation field. There's a distinction there, which we can get into, I guess, um, and I knew I was interested in math.
I was also studying economics at the time I had a minor in math and put all that together and finance was a kind of no brainer. If you will, I don't want to say it was that cut and dry. It was certainly something where I developed a passion for over time. But this mentor of mine, his name is Glenn Freed, gave me some really, really good advice within the Broad range of potential career decisions or opportunities in financial services and wealth management being a very, very kind of well-balanced version of it.
It's not investment. It wasn't investment banking where you're working ungodly hours right out of college. It was something where you had to. Decent quality of life. You could work directly with individuals and have an impact on their life, but then also really take the benefits of finance where you're really learning how the world works in a sense, and getting that broad vantage point of the inner workings of whether it be, you know, politics or businesses or supply chains, et cetera.
I mean, that's one amazing thing about finance and from that wealth management standpoint, it was a great. Intersection of all these kind of interesting things. And then I alluded to it, but specifically on the independent side of things. So I've been on the independent side of the wealth management industry, my entire career.
And I believe quite strongly in that kind of from a fiduciary or alignment of interest standpoint, where we are able to be really on the same page and in an incredible alignment with our clients to, to drive impact, to drive meaning for them in their life, using the conduit of finances.
Gopi Rangan: You've been in this space for 15 years now, and it has both the math side of the intellectual stimulation and you also get to talk to people and understand their desires, their appetite for risk and make investments based on a lot of qualitative decisions as well.
Exciting world indeed. Let's talk about AWM Capital. What is AWM Capital? Can you give a quick description and also talk about your role as Chief Investment Officer? What does a Chief Investment Officer do at a firm like AWM Capital?
Justin Dyer: AWM Capital is a multifamily office. Our unique flavor, if you will, is we have a pretty distinct focus on professional athletes.
It's not exclusive, but it's really AWM Capital serving professional athletes and specifically two of my business partners, Brandon and Eric played some professional baseball many years ago at this point, but really when they got done with their, um, limited professional career, they wanted to solve the problem that probably many people are familiar with.
If you're not, it's an interesting story, but that's a poor relationship between athletes and. Money typically, right? That's a very broad statement. I want to definitely qualify it with that. But there's famous 30 for 30 episodes, which is a great series on ESPN that just highlight the difficulty challenge.
You know, you choose your word that athletes can have when you go from often middle class or even in some cases very poor upbringing to vast wealth in a relatively short period of time, right? The earnings period of a professional athlete is, you know, depending on your sport, single digit years in many cases, and in some cases, low single digit years.
And so there's a very interesting, unique dynamic at play. And that's really something that my business partners and we, as a firm today are very passionate about trying to help and serve. So that's our true North, I would say. We have an identity statement that is as follows. We're the only multifamily office that uses a human centered approach to serve professional athletes.
And that's really important in everything that we do. Getting into your, the second part of your question around chief investment officer, it's taking that identity and making sure it bleeds into really everything we do as a firm, but specifically to a client's investment portfolio, making sure that the portfolio, the objective of the portfolio is to maximize returns.
In light of whatever a flourishing family could be or flourishing individual could be for our end client. There's a lot of specifics we can get into around that. Um, it's not just some, you know, touchy feely statement. We believe we put some rubber to the road when it comes to actually implementing on that statement.
Gopi Rangan: Athletes have a short shelf life for their career and they quickly retire from whichever sport they are in. Most of the sports have, like you said, single digit years of career in them. And if they make it, it really transforms the person's economic status. Now, often these athletes come from below average capabilities, and then they quickly build wealth.
Many of the athletes don't manage their wealth well, and they kind of squander it away. But when they manage well, it actually works fabulously for themselves and their families. I've seen stories that Michael Jordan made more money outside of basketball after he retired than he made while he was playing basketball.
We won't talk much about your clients, but it's great to see that that's the kind of client profile you cater to. Uh, let's talk about the investment side on behalf of your clients. That's what you manage as the CIO. Let's talk, talk at the high level. What are the different allocations in your assets and where does venture capital fit in that allocation?
Justin Dyer: Sure. So, we are overseeing total balance sheet. That's really, really important to us. We typically won't engage with clients if it is a subset, you know, to your point, Hey, manage my venture portfolio or public equity or whatnot. Reason for that is starting at the macro. This all goes back to what I said with our identity statement, but we really believe in orienting everything towards one's priorities or one's goals in life.
What will lead to a flourishing life? We say money is a tool that you should use in the most optimal way to accomplish your priorities or to accomplish what's important to you. So there's a lot of work done upfront with our advisors, our client relationship team that then flows down to the investment portfolio, and we will construct a custom portfolio for each and every client in light of.
What their priorities are. Another big thing we focus on is the overarching financial structure that is required to support those priorities. So that's not just asset allocation. That's part of it, but it's what's the liquidity/illiquidity makeup of one's financial structure? Financial structures, sometimes confused in my opinion, and it's an internal word, but confused with pure net worth.
It's very close or very similarly related to that, but it includes certain things like unrealized human capital. So athletes are a great example. Founders, this actually even ties into our business owners as well, where there's an asset you have, it's your human capital that has some unrealized potential.
In some cases, you kind of know what that is because you've raised a couple rounds of financing, or you have a guaranteed contract, or... You're entering your free agency and there's a marketplace and you can kind of price what that actually looks like, but the game, and we want to pay attention to that the game to play is to optimize the realization of that human capital.
So that all flows into what our ending portfolio looks like. And it's done in a liability driven investment format. So kind of the endowment model, if you will, we're, we're taking what's important to a client, the priorities. The goals that they've communicated to us, both in the dimension of time, and then also the dimension of importance.
Hey, this is really, really important that I accomplish this 10 years from now, 20 years from now, or maybe it's a little bit more flexible. Something, you know, usually short term is of high importance. It's called what we call essential spending. And then we just don't take risks with those type of priorities.
We will match pretty conservative, plain vanilla assets with those type of priorities or goals. And then we just kind of build from there. It's almost like a Maslow's hierarchy of portfolio construction based on your needs. And once we get to a point and once wealth gets to a size where typically there's excess resources, that's going to go to a second generation.
You've referenced Michael Jordan, right? We have clients that are starting to be in that similar conversation, not as high as Michael Jordan. Hopefully one day, certainly he's had incredible success, but we get to. Start to really think about that multi-generational puzzle. It really is a puzzle. It's not just from an investment management standpoint.
That's obviously what we're talking about today. There's a lot of inter family dynamics that go into play that really make that successful. But when we are in those conversations, that's where venture typically starts to make a ton of sense. We love the asset class. It's the bulk of what we do in alternatives in the private markets for a couple of reasons.
One, the duration, general duration of the asset class lines up with a young professional athlete demographic or profile. You know, there's a true liquidity or illiquidity premium that. You have to be able to accept or timeframe that you have to be able to accept when you're allocating to venture and it lines up quite well for our clients.
The other piece of it is we are pretty active in the early stage side of it. It's not all we do in the VC, but it's hefty majority. So we create a fund to fund vehicle and 60 70 percent of that goes to early stage and we want diversification, which is why we do a fund of funds. But. We also then get the benefit of long term compounding of that higher expected return in that earlier stage segment of venture.
And so those two things really combined together, just line up incredibly well for the profile of our clients. There is also very much a, I think of values add capability. It's not the case across the board, but professional athletes do have a brand that they can use in some cases. We're cautious around that.
Cause I think there's also often misunderstood expectations between founders and athletes, like what it actually takes to truly add value. And those are some conversations we have and love about venture as well to really help get companies, whether it be from zero to one, one to two, et cetera, et cetera.
Gopi Rangan: This is incredibly insightful. The venture capital world is kind of a black box, especially the limited partner side of it. It's great to see your incentives and your interest and how you serve your clients, what they expect out of you. And from there, we can begin to understand how you make these investment decisions and venture funds.
Let's talk about the venture capital side of your allocations. How many venture capital firms do you have relationships with? And how often do you add new venture capital funds to your
Justin Dyer: portfolio? So like I said, we create essentially an annual vehicle, annual fund to fund, if you want to think of it that way, for our clients.
It's captive to our clients. We don't take in outside capital. Of that, we typically have 10 to 12 funds per year. If you think about a typical VC cycle, let's just assume there's a three year, you know, back to market re up cycle. That means we want and have relationships with somewhere between 25 and 30 funds over a fundraising cycle.
So we can kind of divide those up into each of our annual vehicles and commit to 10 to 12. Ideally in a perfect world, we have that list as a fixed list in perpetuity. Let's call it now in reality, that's not the case, right? I mentioned that we have an early stage focus. We also are, we'll commit to emerging managers.
In some cases, emerging managers don't go on to raise additional funds. Luckily, the, those that we've committed to have, so, you know, we're not blind to the potential reality and risk there. And so suffice it to say, we're kind of always in market. Now that could either be just to make sure we are truly in what we feel like are the best managers, given a specific area of focus.
Alternatively, we will not re up with every single manager. We make an assumption of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent of that list will fall off our list for a variety of reasons, and we will not re up with them. So for all of those reasons, we're fairly accurate. In meeting new funds, comparing with other LPs, some of whom you've had on this podcast, all great people, and, uh, really appreciate that network to compare notes against.
Gopi Rangan: Every year you put together a new fund of funds vehicle for your clients and through that fund of funds vehicle, you invest in funds that are in market, and some of those funds you already have relationships with their firms. These are firms that maybe you have previously invested in their funds and then now back in the market for with a new fund and you also add new funds to the portfolio that, you know, brand new relationships for the firm.
Can we take an example, talk about how did you meet the venture capital investor, the GP? How did you build the relationship? What goes on in the first meeting, second meeting, what gets you excited about these conversations?
Justin Dyer: Yeah, so a couple of common threads. Let me start there and then I can highlight specific names.
So I'm on the selection committee for RAISE, the RAISE Global Conference, which is incredibly valuable. It's a decent amount of work. It's not nearly as much work as the producers that put it on, but it's great. It, I get to see, you know, the last couple of years it's been, I believe, 40 or so emerging managers that end up on my list.
There's, I think something like four or 500 total entries and it gets divided up, but it's a really fascinating exercise to just over a couple of week period each year, really get a pulse of what what's going on specifically on the emerging manager space. And we've committed to funds from Raise. Ulu Ventures is a great example of that.
They were actually on my list and then I saw them present at Raise and we ended up making a commitment as a result of that. We had a number of face to face meetings and I can get into what that. Typically it looks like for us, but that's a great example. Similarly through the LP network, I just referenced LPs.
We have standing calls are not afraid to pick up the phone and call various individuals to just say, Hey, what are you seeing? We feel like there's this weakness in our portfolio. You know, do you have any interesting names that you've either committed to or, or looked at? And so that's another great source.
I think those type of sources where there's almost a pre qualification from somebody I really, really trust, either an individual or an institution, helps me quite a bit. We have a lot of volume and if I can get a positive signal in an easy way through some sort of qualified vetted individual, then I will rely on that.
I realize that that is potentially eliminating some opportunity, and that's just just our reality. At some point, I would love to have the resources to adequately look at every single fund or opportunity that comes to us, whether it's just a cold outreach or not. We do capture that information and do an assessment of that after the end of the year.
But I do need to use some signal for that. Uh, you know, another great related Example concretely is Alex Edelson, who you had on your podcast. He's he's introduced me. So we compare notes quite a bit. Um, and he's brought 2 funds, um, that were we 1 we've committed to the other 1. we're quite interested in. I can't say that name yet because we haven't got a full formal commitment, but, um, you know, he was in an original introduction for us to precursor, which I'm sure everyone here knows.
Um, We had had some alignment and connection with Charles at precursor and other ways, but it was kind of Alex that that really brought that across the finish line for us and potentially Charles. So, um, those type of introductions are invaluable for for me and my team.
Gopi Rangan: I've co invested along with Ulu Ventures and Precursor Ventures.
I've referred opportunities to them. I think Ulu's invested in five startups that I've referred to them. It's great to see that you are actively involved in curating the next generation of venture funds and you contribute to the ecosystem through RAISE and other programs as well. I can see that, uh, you, you're truly passionate about this and this is going to shape the future of venture capital.
What is difficult about evaluating venture funds, especially when you're evaluating the first fund, second fund or third fund, like an emerging manager?
Justin Dyer: Um, that's a great question. I think it's ever changing quite honestly, and it depends on the underlying opportunity. If it's an emerging manager, that's a spin out, you know.
We can debate the title or the definition of emerging manager probably for a day. Um, but let's just assume that that's what we're talking about. You know, that makes it a lot easier, right? There's a, there's a track record. There's an ability to, to sense some level of skill. And quite frankly, that's typically where we're a little bit more comfortable with.
Not that they have to always be a spin out, but there has to be some sort of connection to an ability to invest. Um, I have a little bit of a harder time, say if it's a former operator, who's now trying to become an investor, not to say that they won't be successful at all, but those are often a little bit more challenging for us to, to diligence.
Um, we will do that. It's probably few and far between just because it's a little bit more qualitative, if you will, connecting their operating ability to investing. It's been done time and time again. It's not to say that that can't be done at all. I completely acknowledge it can be. It's just, it is a different skillset going from operating a business to investing in picking and building a portfolio that gives you the greatest odds of success of outcomes.
Gopi Rangan: Let's take both cohorts. The first cohort is where they have an existing track record from a previous firm. That's a little easier for you to do diligence on. And the second cohort is new investors who are entering the market. They have a network, they have the amazing ability to source good deals. They haven't built a career in investing and they're starting in both cohorts.
What questions do you ask them? What do you look for, especially in the first few conversations?
Justin Dyer: In the second cohort, primarily.
Gopi Rangan: Yeah, let's take the second cohort.
Justin Dyer: Okay. Second cohort is a little more challenging. So let's... It is more challenging. The way I think about it in early stage, specifically, I think in venture, broadly speaking, right, there's a confidence or comfort level you have to get to with one's network or ability to source deals.
Let's use broad network as a loose proxy for that. I think when it comes to a manager that is going from an operator to an investor, I would say that's one of the biggest items that I can get comfortable with or want to get comfortable with, because you're investing in their deal sourcing capability in addition to.
Picking and winning and those tried and true elements, but really what's the quality of the network? Is this a network that I believe has either proven ability in the past to source great companies, or for some reason, uh, expect that in the future. Ulu almost is a both sides of that coin. They have a great network.
kind of tried and true network with their, um, alignment with Stanford, but then they're also looking into underrepresented entrepreneurs and founders as well. And they have some networks and are really cultivating those arenas proactively. And so that's a great example of something I would be looking for, looking to validate when I'm looking at an emerging manager that doesn't have necessarily direct investing experience.
Gopi Rangan: How many funds do you meet for every one investment you say yes to? No. Why do you say no?
Justin Dyer: So over a given year, we will receive and look at between four and five hundred new investment opportunities each year.
Gopi Rangan: And that includes emerging managers…
Justin Dyer: Emerging managers, established managers, late stage, early stage.
Yeah, exactly. So we commit to around 10 to 12 each year, going back to the math I was highlighting earlier. Of that, you can make an assumption that somewhere between two to three of those are probably net new. Now, next year, if our projections go according to plan, we have a little bit of a gap to fill.
So net new managers next year, it might be a higher number just by what we're seeing in terms of funds coming back to raise and the timing of our deployment, right? There's always this kind of. You got to play this game of matching up. Uh, when my fund is open, has capital to allocate. And then when someone might be raising, you know, there are tools around that you can do use to get around it, warehousing lines of credit, et cetera.
And we try not to, cause there's just an inherent cost to that, but we certainly will, but to answer your question directly, yeah, next year we'll probably have five plus net new funds we're committing to.
Gopi Rangan: Well, this is great. Let's do a quick math on this. And I'm really curious to find out why you say no.
Let's say you invest in 10 funds on an average year and eight of those funds are existing relationships. You usually churn out 10 percent of them from an existing portfolio. So nine of them pitch to you, eight of them you invest in, roughly. So you're adding two new managers to get that portfolio of 10 funds for that year.
And you're choosing two out of a few hundred. So there are a lot of no's. A lot of no's. Yes. It's like a hundred to one ish, like in that range. Right. I'm now very curious to find out why you say no. What's the most common reason for you to say no?
Justin Dyer: I think the answer is probably going to be there's some nuance to it and probably no different than you're hearing a lot in your series on LPs, but well, okay, there's some very easy ways in which we say no.
So we do have some portfolio construction targets within our vehicle. We like broad diversification. So I want a good chunk of my early stage managers, especially to be more of the lower concentration, high shots on goal. Lulu is a great example of that precursor as well. And that gives me a nice kind of core allocation within our seed focus.
I know the odds of us hitting a true home run there are not really, really high. It's not impossible, but also not expecting that. But then we'll round that out with lower concentration, you know, very convicted and sometimes contrarian type managers. A great example there is a Decian's type fund, which we've committed to, right?
Very high concentration, contrarian type manager, high conviction in the case. In times he does invest and so we rounded out with that type of focus or that type of fun. And if we already have that, so for our vehicle this year, we have our high concentration manager. And so if someone doesn't fit that, that becomes kind of an easy.
No, like, Hey, you know, we've already allocated to a similar strategy beyond that. I think the quality of the network and the data behind that is really, really, really important. If I just can't get there, it kind of goes back to the earlier topic we were discussing. If I can't see that this is a valid network or a viable network to drive investment opportunity, and not just to drive initial investment opportunities, I think that's another important distinction.
Is this something that has a caring? Ability over the life of a partnership. We don't want to churn our managers. We would love to be long term partners with everyone. And so if this is a, an idea or a thesis along with a network that we see long term repeatable deployment of capital and opportunities in it, then that helps us quite a bit as well.
And if we can't get there, that's probably another source of saying no. I also mentioned to you as well early on, I do use my network as a qualifier for better or worse. Again, it's something I'd love to get better at, but it is a quality signal that I've gotten comfortable with. And if there isn't a direct tie, then it makes it a little bit more challenging to go further with that opportunity.
Because quite honestly, there's a lot. We have a finite amount of time that we have to make decisions where we can make decisions.
Gopi Rangan: Thank you for sharing candidly the thought process. The method you use to qualify funds, and I see that you have an open minded strategy where you both invest in large portfolio construction models and also concentrated models.
Let me flip the question. Have you ever encountered a situation where you couldn't get into a fund? Do you regret?
Justin Dyer: Let me see. Um, Well, there's potentially a situation right now where we might not be able to get in the one I alluded to, it came by way of Alex. We'll see it's a coming down to the line.
There's kind of a line of investors that there's a good chance it might be oversubscribed and actually send an email just before I jumped on here and expressed our interest and excitement to hopefully partner with this individual. Let me see here. There's been a couple scenarios where our allocation has been cut down.
Uh, and then that's typically because it's been an oversubscribed hitting the hard cap. And admittedly, we've come in late. And so we just rounded out whatever we could there. In both of those cases, I wish I could have made a bigger allocation to them. But you know, that's just again, the timing side of it.
Gopi Rangan: Well, let's lead with that. What is a good thing about LP? Why is AWM Capital a good LP?
Justin Dyer: Sure. We want to be true long term partners. I think first and foremost, we aren't sharp elbowed LPs. We want to be as valuable as we possibly can. We have a unique clientele. And in many cases, we have provided value. In some cases, it's just going to a baseball game and going down on the field for batting practice and we'll partner with GPs and they can bring founders and whatnot.
And it's, and it's a fun time. It's a, it's a great time. It's a fun time for our clients who come over and meet some VCs and it's fun for the founders and VCs who get to meet them as well. So things like that, that are relatively simple, but kind of high impact, it's quite fun. You know, we have a unique access in that sense and we can provide some value there.
Additionally, we can connect depending on what the underlying portfolio company is trying to do. But in some cases, we've helped people think through go to market a specific example. I can't give the company name. They're still in stealth, but it's a wearables. And they're trying to think about the exact product.
They have a wide opportunity set to really run with when they're going to. Go to market with this and we've connected them with four or five people in the health and wellness professional athlete community, just to brainstorm, Hey, these type of markers would be really good to see. Or this is what I look at when I'm training my clients, my athlete clients, uh, and things like that are really, really valuable to founders themselves and obviously the VC in addition.
So really it's, I'd say kind of, you know, in summary, we're patient, we're long term capital. We're repeated capital. We're growing quite a lot. Thanks to a lot of the other things we do outside of just the VC world. And so we're committed to this asset class long term and committed to deploying to it consistently over that long term period of time.
And then we can add value wherever possible, given our unique clientele.
Gopi Rangan: As you make these investments, I see that AWM Capital itself is growing and your clientele is growing and their clients are also doing better, which means that there might be more capital available to invest in venture funds in the future.
Lance Armstrong famously talked about how he invested in lower carbon capital that really made a huge impact financially for him and saved him at a time of trouble. I can see that the investments that you make is not just on behalf of an institution, but there are real people behind it. And maybe perhaps when you invest, we could even see who those people are and how they will use the wealth that is created by these investments.
And that is rare to see for a VC. Where does the money go? Where do the returns go? And how are they used? And that's not very visible. And in your case, it becomes a lot more apparent. We're coming towards the end of our conversation. And I want to ask you about your community involvement. Is there a nonprofit organization you are excited about?
Which one?
Justin Dyer: So I think raise is a great example of that. I think, uh, I mean, we're coming off of the most recent conference about a month ago in the Presidio in October, and I'm tangentially involved being on the selection committee, but each year, it just seems to be a higher quality of people and really trying to support the future of the venture capital community.
It's a great group to be involved with. There are other phenomenal organizations as well that do similar things, but. Thank you. Raise is one I'm closely aligned with. So love being involved there.
Gopi Rangan: Justin, thank you very much for spending time with me and answering patiently a lot of probing questions about how limited partners think.
I look forward to sharing your nuggets of wisdom with the
Justin Dyer: world. Thank you. I really, really enjoyed it. Uh, and yeah, hopefully everyone does get some, uh, information or some knowledge from this.
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